Online abuse is rife in general, but particularly so in the dog training community. I recently experienced this for myself, and in the hope that it might help others I decided to share my thoughts on the subject
The day had started off rather well: I’d had a lovely walk with the dogs, booked in a couple of new clients and even treated myself to a haircut. At some point in the morning, I’d noticed someone sharing a link to a survey in a local dog owners’ group I am a member of. I’m a firm believer that it’s common sense to always know who you’re sharing your data with, so I did a bit of digging about the people behind it. As it turns out, it was being promoted by a couple of trainers who advocate the use of e-collars and other ‘tools’ in training reactive dogs. I commented on the original post and flagged up the fact that people would be sharing their data with non-force-free trainers, in the interest of ensuring transparency for everyone. Little did I know what would happen next.
As it turns out, someone in the (private) group had taken a screenshot of my comments and sent it to one of the trainers responsible for the survey. She then posted it to her Instagram stories (with my name and profile photo included), calling me a ‘Karen’, a ‘bottom-feeder’ and other less savoury words I won’t repeat here. Apparently, the fact they use an e-collar has nothing to do with this survey, which was apparently intended to help rescue dogs (though this was not at all clear from the survey itself or the publicity surrounding it). I felt sick; though I don’t like to toot my own horn, I would consider myself a relatively nice person and it was heart-wrenching to hear someone talk about me like this.
Why are people on social media so angry?
There was no question that I wasn’t going to publicly engage with this person in any way. I won’t name and shame them here either, as that would make me just as bad as them (besides, in the immortal words of Beyoncé in Destiny’s Child’s noughties banger ‘Survivor’: you know I’m not gon’ diss you on the internet; ‘cause my mama taught me better than that). Yet as I was out on my morning run with Crash in an attempt to shake off the whole situation, I kept wondering why they felt the need to write a rage-filled post containing a host of personal insults rather than engage with me in a more constructive way. Then I was reminded of a book I read recently – Stolen Focus by Johann Hari – which has an excellent section explaining why social media and their algorithms promote this kind of extreme response.
In the book, Hari asks the reader to imagine two Facebook feeds: one full of content that makes you feel calm and happy, and another with content that makes you feel angry and outraged. The algorithm is neutral about the question of whether or not you are calm or angry; all it is programmed to do is show you content that will keep you scrolling. And unfortunately, it is human nature to stare at something negative for a lot longer than something positive – this effect has even been proven by scientists in multiple studies. What this ultimately means is that we are shown more and more of this negative, enraging content, gradually becoming more and more enraged ourselves in the process.
It's not about you
When I looked at it from this perspective, I realised: it’s not really about me. Yes, they were angry about what I had said, but their response said more about the world we live in today than it did about me as a person. When you exist in an echo chamber filled with people who nurture your beliefs, a single voice that speaks out against those beliefs can feel like an existence-threatening attack. And when we feel under threat, we lash out. However, even rationalising it in this way – it still hurt. My instinct was to cower and hide; in fact I said to myself I’d never post anything about aversive training techniques ever again, and would remain completely neutral in my online presence.
Then I realised: that’s exactly what these dogs are experiencing when they’re subjected to an electric shock, or the constriction of a prong collar, or being hung up by a slip lead. They shut down and practice avoidance, just like I wanted to do. And you know what? It feels really awful. We’ll never truly know how dogs feel emotions as we can’t ask them, but there is significant evidence from MRI scans performed on fully conscious dogs that they do feel some kind of emotion. We can also reasonably infer from dogs’ behaviour that they are feeling frightened, depressed or anxious. So why on earth would we inflict this on them when we know how awful it feels ourselves?
Why we should all choose kindness
More than ever before, I am confident in my belief that kindness is the way forward in dog training and behaviour modification. If being opposed to the use of aversive tools makes me a ‘Karen’, then so be it; I’ll wear the label with pride. I will also proudly practice ethical, force-free training, and when one method doesn’t work, I won’t simply abandon the whole concept of positive reinforcement and decide that physical punishment is the only way. Many people don’t realise that not all force-free dog training is equal: different trainers have different skill sets and use different methods that all fall under the umbrella of force-free training. If a particular training method isn’t working, there are always other options to explore that don’t involve causing your dog physical pain. These options include getting the dog checked out by a vet to see if they might be suffering from any medical conditions that could be underlying their problematic behaviour.
In summary, I stand by what I said: in this day and age, knowing what we know, we cannot label ‘tools’ such as e-collars and prong collars and ‘techniques’ such as hanging and garrotting as anything other than abusive. I will not tip-toe around the issue because someone on the internet doesn’t like it, and I will continue to help owners who understand that their dogs are living, feeling creatures and want to treat them as such.